Strongly Worded

Cold Front

Remember how I started learning biofeedback, which is supposed to help me better respond to stress, and thus reduce the severity and frequency of my headaches?

Well, not that I’m complaining or criticizing (given my resolution and all), but I’ve never meshed with the practitioner, Cathy, whose “relaxing” voice (you know that voice … it’s the soothing, cooing intonation of yoga teachers and guided imagery-gurus) just puts me on edge. When I breathe well, (by which I mean deeply and at a slow, regular pace) she praises me and then instantly demans an explanation of what made that particular interval successful. I am always stuck. I mean, I inhaled, exhaled. Then I inhaled again. What else do you want to know?

Anyway. One really illuminating biofeedback “take-away” (and God help me, I hate that expression) is that migraine sufferers often have wacky internal temperature controls. I am always freezing, and my hands are freakishly cold, and thus I typically sit with my hands clasped between my knees. Cathy’s office is quite chilly, so I always dress warmly and sit in the waiting room in my signature knee-clasping position. Then, when Cathy appears, she takes my hands and exclaims how warm they are and thus how relaxed I must be. I explain about the hands-between-knees thing. And she smiles knowingly. “You feel relaxed about being here. That’s really great.”

Knowing this, I deliberately left my hands out and about before my last session. I just held them in my lap like a normal person.

She invited me into the office and taped the thermometer sensor to my palm. Then she gasped. 70 degrees. She admitted that mine was the coldest temperature reading she’d come across in her entire career. I finally felt affirmed.

Cathy insists that my crazy cranked-up nervous system can be calmed without drugs, through breathing and yoga. My friend E. is doing yoga as her New Year’s resolution, and so I thought I’d kickstart my own practice. After all, I did a whole semester in college (and I think I may have gotten an A), and I’ve taken a handful of classes at my gym over the last … OK … seven years.

My gym offers a restorative yoga class on Thursday nights, in which participants basically roll around (very slowly) amongst bolsters and blankets. It's dark and the instructors pad around in bare feet making soothing sounds and covering your eyes with towels. You’re supposed to face down if you have an anxious temperament and face up if you have a lethargic temperament.

I went last week and I hated it so much. I twisted into position and obsessed about whether I was facing the wrong way (I was, and the instructor tip-toed over and said very gently and soothingly that “most of the class is turned in the other direction” – which I had no way of knowing because there was a towel covering my eyes). Then I obsessed about whether the instructors' footsteps all around me were heading my way and whether they were going to crush my glasses. I tried so hard to concentrate on my breath, but my attempts were completely and totally overpowered by my thoughts. This is really not restorative or relaxing. Not at all. NOT AT ALL!

I’m not giving up (quite yet), but it’s a very long (cold) road ahead.

Posted by Dori at 5:07 PM